Conflict Avoidance and Chaos Gremlins

We explore the crucial difference between conflict avoidance and avoidant attachment, examining how avoiding small issues creates bigger problems in long-term relationships. The person who avoids conflict actually controls the relationship dynamic, creating a pressure cooker where ten skipped conversations eventually lead to one explosive confrontation.

• Conflict avoidance is different from avoidant attachment, though they're often confused
• Avoiding issues in long-term relationships causes problems to grow larger over time
• The conflict-avoidant person paradoxically controls the relationship by setting its pace
• Trust requires truth plus timeliness plus completeness—avoidance breaks timeliness
• When we think we're "letting things go," our biology often holds onto tension anyway
• Secure attachment approaches conflict directly with clear communication
• Conflict avoidance can lead to ending valuable relationships when seeing others' pain becomes unbearable

Stay curious and stay uncomfortable.

Chapters

• 0:35 Welcome to Speak Plainly Podcast
• 3:16 Distinguishing Types of Avoidance
• 6:04 The Downside of Conflict Avoidance
• 12:50 How Small Issues Become Relationship Killers
• 17:13 Trust Equation: Truth + Timeliness + Completeness
• 23:39 Secure Attachment and Handling Conflict Well
• 29:05 Closing Thoughts and Personal Message

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:35

Thank you, hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Speak Plainly podcast, where we speak plainly about things that matter. I'm your host, al Medicine, and in today's podcast we are going to be talking about avoidance. This was actually a requested podcast from a dear friend, someone I love with all of my heart because they have some avoidant tendencies. But when I say that, what comes up for you when I say that a person is avoidant or some avoidant tendencies? But when I say that, what comes up for you when I say that a person is avoidant or has avoidant tendencies, what does that bring up to you? Does that mean that they avoid conflict or does it mean that they avoid their emotions? Or does it mean both? And that's an important differentiation because they're different. A person who is conflict avoidant is not the same as a person who has avoidant attachment, and I think people get them mixed up. I think people we start to conflate the two because we use the same word, avoidant, and the word is appropriate for both, because people are either avoiding conflict or their attachment style is avoidant. But those are two fundamentally different things. We're going to be talking about the downside of avoidance. We know the upsides, because the upside of avoidance, of all types of avoidance, is that you get to avoid the thing you don't like. So the upside is pretty obvious. The upside for avoidant attached people separate from conflict avoidant people. In attachment theory you have securely attached people, which supposedly exist, and those are the people who are welled and believe that they get a secure connection with their caregivers early on and that sets them up for secure relationships later in life. But that seems to be the rare bird and the more common aspects of attachment are going to be anxious attached or avoidant attached or the combo disorganized attached and anxious attached is. I tend toward anxious attached. I'm actually both, because I had both types. I had enough chaos in my early life that I am the mixed. But I tend to err toward an anxious attached first and if that doesn't work then I'll play the avoidant card. But anxious attached is when there's a problem. I just have to show you how much I love you and show you how much I care and show you how hard I'm willing to work to solve the problem, and then that's that. And then the avoidant type personality is somebody who's like okay, there's a problem, oh well, it will probably go away If we just ignore it, it won't be a big deal. In an hour a day, a month, a year, 10 years, whatever.

Speaker 1: 3:40

The avoidant attached person is different from the conflict avoidant person. The conflict avoidant-attached person is different from the conflict-avoidant person. The conflict-avoidant person can be anxious-attached or avoidant-attached, or securely-attached. They're probably not securely-attached because then they wouldn't have a real deep-seated reason to avoid conflict, but they could be, and this person I'm actually thinking of is pretty securely attached. I think they consider themselves securely attached. I think they might have some anxious tendencies, but that's why they and I get along so well.

Speaker 1: 4:17

This specific episode I wanted to explore the downsides, because there are downsides to everything in life. You're welcome If you haven't figured that out yet happy third birthday but there's always a downside to everything, and conflict avoidance specifically, which I believe is what this person was actually after, because I was able to speak to them in person about some things that apparently resonated deeply with them, one of which is about trustworthiness, which is a really big thing for me. Trustworthiness is a very big issue for me and I think it's a big issue for most people. I'm just very forward about it and I live a very honest life, a painfully honest life. I pay a lot of consequences for my honesty, but the one I don't have to pay is authenticity, and I'm not willing to pay that price. But there's always a price, and the price for conflict avoidance is that you create more conflict. And it may not seem that way, but in certain types of relationships and this is the important part in certain types of relationships or certain, this is the important part in certain types of relationships or certain situations, because for me, as you probably know by now, everything is context dependent.

Speaker 1: 5:31

So if a person is conflict avoidant and you are having a tiff, you're having a mild disagreement, or somebody bothers you, they do something that makes you upset and you don't really care about them. You're not in a long-term relationship with them. Then why do you care? No big deal, avoid the conflict, smile, nod and move on. You can be very British about it, but when that relationship is a relationship that you intend to be longitudinal, as in, you intend for this relationship to be a long-lasting relationship, whether that's with a boss, a co-worker, a best friend, a partner, life partner, it doesn't matter. When that relationship is longitudinal and you are conflict avoidant, that relationship is longitudinal and you are conflict avoidant. The thing that you should probably know first, right out the gate, is that you run the relationship, you run the relationship.

Speaker 1: 6:37

The conflict avoidant person, the person who is avoiding the conflict because they don't want to be in charge, they don't want the conflict, they want to avoid that. And not every conflict avoidant person doesn't want to be in charge, but for the most part they go hand in hand. If you want to be in charge and you're like kind of good at that, then you kind of have to be good at conflict, and managing it Doesn't mean you need to enjoy it. I hate it but I am good at managing conflict. I hate it but I am good at managing conflict and I like leadership roles in that way because I'm good at it. But when you ignore a problem with a new hire or you ignore a problem with the guy at the booth next to you at the bar, not a lot goes wrong if you avoid that.

Speaker 1: 7:32

But let's say, this is a person that you're in a long term romantic relationship with and they do this thing that bothers you. It really shouldn't bother you. It's really silly. They always leave their dishes in the sink. Every single night they leave their dish in the sink, they get to it the next day. But you're from a household where you do all the dishes every night. There's not allowed to be dirty dishes left in the sink, because it's unhealthy, it's grimy and it's unhygienic. Right, maybe not unhealthy, it's unhygienic. That's the culture say that you were raised with. That's the culture say that you were raised with. And the person that you love the most in the world is there. And they come from a household that was much more chaotic and they never considered doing the dishes when they were in the sink. They did the dishes when they were out of bowls or they did the dishes when the sink was too full to fit more dishes in. That's my family.

Speaker 1: 8:26

If that was the way that you were raised, there's nothing wrong with either one of those situations. It's just a matter of how do we want to do the dishes. Is it bothersome for one versus the other? Is it bothersome to one person or bothersome to another, and how much? And you can look at those variables to weigh how much you want to like, give and take in how you do the dishes.

Speaker 1: 8:52

But if you don't say anything because you're conflict avoidant, if you say nothing at all and you keep avoiding this thing, you're going to get annoyed. You're going to get like, really annoyed, but because you don't like conflict, you're not going to say anything to them and you're going to know that you're annoyed about the dishes. For a while, like for a long while, you're going to know that it's the dishes that are pissing you off. But after a few months, or a year, or three years, you're going to forget that it's the dishes. You're going to forget the dishes were the issue and now it's this person. Now it's just some thing that bothers you and you're not even really sure what it is anymore. Yeah, you recognize it's the dishes, but it's been around so long. This dislike of this thing that you have avoided the conflict of has been around for so long.

Speaker 1: 10:01

The problem gets bigger and bigger because problems get bigger when we ignore them. So the problems gets bigger and bigger, because problems get bigger when we ignore them. So the problems get bigger and bigger and bigger. And then you're really uncomfortable and your partner notices that you're really uncomfortable and they're like what's going on, what's wrong? And you say nothing. It's nothing, it's fine, it's not a big deal, I'm just being silly. Okay, fine, cool, you're being silly. I'm going to trust you on that and walk away and not bother.

Speaker 1: 10:29

But to a conflict-avoidant person in there, they're really looking for you to say, hey, are you sure? Because it seems like there's a problem and it seems like you're really bothered and I don't really. I can't put my finger on why. This is the chance for the conflict-avoidant person to be honest and say that they have an issue. But if they don't, they will avoid and avoid and avoid until there are so many issues that they feel that they're walking around on eggshells all of the time. Or they will feel that they're making somebody else walk around on eggshells all the time. And that's what happened with my friend. And that's what happened with my friend.

Speaker 1: 11:25

I didn't know this until this trip, but they were with someone that they love with all of their heart and still do, and they saw how much they were hurting this person and they couldn't stop it. They couldn't stop it, they couldn't change it, they couldn't make them hurt less because they couldn't fix the issue, because fixing an issue inherently means conflict. You have to address the issue, which is a form of conflict, in order to change it. So things just stack up and stack up and stack up until the person with the least needs runs the relationship, because then it's all about you. You and you never ask for anything and you never cause any problems. You're conflict avoidant. They never start any stuff. It must be me and you're just trying to take care of them. You're trying to take care of them because they're always conflict avoidant, they're never bringing up the issues, they're always being sweet. So you're trying to take care of them.

Speaker 1: 12:35

But what this person wound up doing was asking for a divorce. They were asking for a divorce because they said I can't stand to see how much I hurt this person. I can't stand to see how much I hurt this person that I love. I can't stand to see how much I hurt this person. I can't stand to see how much I hurt this person that I love. I can't stand to see how much I hurt my partner. It's too painful.

Speaker 1: 13:03

And so they broke off the relationship because they saw their partner being hurt by themselves, which is, of course. If you know me, I'm sure you can guess exactly what I said to that which was guess exactly what I said to that which was honey I love you with all of my heart, but fuck you for that. I mean it. Fuck you for that. Oh, you don't get to make that decision.

Speaker 1: 13:32

And this was the fundamental, one of the fundamental issues. You don't get to make that decision because your partner decided to be with you. They made that choice. They chose to be with you and they chose to stick with you, no matter how much you were hurting them, because maybe, maybe, that person is a lot better at dealing with conflict than you are. And now you made a decision for them, one that neither one of you wanted to make, but you made the decision for them because you couldn't stand to see how much they were hurting, but it wasn't your pain. You solved your pain, which was created by watching a person that you love be in pain, but they can handle conflict you can't. They love be in pain, but they can handle conflict you can't. They can handle that pain, you can't, which is why you broke off the relationship. And, lord knows, I've done similar, and I know many, many people who have done similar, and I've talked with other friends and told pieces of this story and they're like oh yeah, no, that's not right. You don't get to make that decision. And two of the four people I said that to was like right, but have you done that? And they're like I mean not really, but kind of not exactly the same. But yeah, a lot of us have had the experience of feeling someone else's pain and then subtly influencing them so they can resolve their pain. So I don't have to feel your pain.

Speaker 1: 15:11

As an empath and the person that I'm thinking of is very empathic, is an incredibly empathic person and often empathy comes with conflict avoidance, because empathy in a lot of cases is this conditioning from early childhood that turns our locus of focus external to us. It turns it external and makes us check our surroundings, the environment that we're in, the people who are also in the environment in which we are, and we look for the biggest threat in that environment and we try to soothe it, to make sure that we are safe, and that externalization and being able to check in with other people and feel what they're feeling before they even feel the ramp up, so we can kind of get in the weeds and make subtle little adjustments here and there that will hopefully influence the conversation or the dynamic that's happening to prevent some other kind of conflict. That's unpleasant. These are the problems that we get with avoidance.

Speaker 1: 16:22

It's really difficult to have a real relationship with a person who is conflict avoidant. Again, this is conflict avoidance. This is not. I'm not talking about avoidant attachment types. I've talked about that on here.

Speaker 1: 16:39

This is specifically conflict avoidance and within your locus of control, you can change this. There is no reason that you cannot become less conflict avoidant. And the thing is is like I said, conflict avoidant puts you in charge. Avoidance feels like staying out of the way, but in practice it actually takes control of the situation, because withholding you, withholding your reality and withholding those conflicts sets the pace of the entire interaction, of the entire relationship. Not answering sets the rhythm. Not naming the issues sets an agenda of having to find things out. It makes you manage the other people around you. People walk on eggshells, picking safe topics, trying to not bring up the real needs or the real issues, because they know that it makes you uncomfortable. So you are in charge.

Speaker 1: 17:52

Decisions drift. If you won't decide because you don't want to create the conflict, then you're putting all of those decisions on somebody else, which just breeds more conflict. That creates a pressure cooker. You skip 10 small talks and what do you get? You get one giant explosion. And each one of these skipped conversations adds to a story, a subconscious story that keeps building and building and building in the silence, in the gaps, without any real information. And it's really hard to change that because that subconscious story building is our truth. That is what when we move through life and we're like this is my truth it comes from the subconscious stories that get put together from our experiences, and avoiding all of those conflicts creates a story that makes it very hard to like say is not the truth.

Speaker 1: 18:59

And then you get boundary creeping one of my favorites. You're boundary creeping where you say yes to things that you don't want to say yes to to avoid friction, meaning you get resentment because that's what happens. Expectations are premeditated resentment and when you avoid the conflict and other people expect you to avoid the conflict, that builds resentment. If you can't say yes or no to a thing because you're afraid of the consequences and you put that on someone else, it creates resentment that erodes trust. People sense the distance that is created and they share less. They tell you less about what's happening inside of them and then problems surface way way later and then cost way way more. If we catch our problems early, we can address it and it's not a big deal. But if you pay later, the bill is always always higher.

Speaker 1: 20:03

A person who is deeply conflict-averse is super hard to trust. Not because they want to deceive you, but because avoiding tension makes them dishonest by omission. Because trust isn't just accuracy, it's timeliness. A truth told six weeks too late is still damaged, is still a lie for six weeks. It's not just about accuracy, it's about timeliness. And if you can't be timely because you're avoiding conflict, that erodes trust.

Speaker 1: 20:38

So what conflict avoidance looks like from the outside is it's fine. When it's not, and your history gets fuzzy, you're like I never said that because nothing was actually said. Clearly, problems shift with no repair at all. They're like oh, I'll call you tomorrow and then silence. They just avoid. That is the thing that also happens with avoidant attachment and it's really annoying. That shit pisses me off. You should be aware I'm with an avoidant person and I don't let him avoid shit. I'm like you do not get to hide this crap. I will not deal with this junk. I won't deal with it. You can have your space and we can come talk about it later. But it will be talked about and it will be talked about in a timely manner, because I'm not going to live with the dis-ease in my physiology. I'm not going to live with the stress, because you avoid things, you've shut down that stress response. You don't cognitively pay a price for the stress that you carry. I do so.

Speaker 1: 21:43

I am very aggressive with my avoidant, attached people in my life and my conflict avoidant people in my life, because I don't think it helps much of anything. Neither does being super aggressive, by the way. But for me the math is really simple. Trust equals truth plus timeliness plus completeness. That's basically it. It's mostly truth, timeliness and completeness. You can also add consistency and repair and things, because you're always going to screw things up, but so long as we go back to truth, timely and complete, we're good. Avoidance breaks the timeliness at least, and then it breaks the completeness second, and then the consistency third. But it breaks them in series and if one of those cracks, people experience you as unreliable, even if you're really really kind. And I think most people want to be thought of as at least somewhat reliable. Maybe not for everything. I'm not the most reliable person in many ways, but there are certain areas, avenues of my life, professionally especially, where I am definitely reliable. I am extremely reliable in extremely few aspects of life.

Speaker 1: 23:04

So let's explore what secure attachment looks like for conflict avoidance. Like I said, it's not going to be super often that you have it because it's if you are securely attached. You're not going to have as many issues with conflict because there's not as much of a risk. We become conflict avoidant because we are afraid that the relationship will break. Anxious attached these attachment styles. We become anxious because we're afraid the relationship will break. And in a securely attached person, you're not thinking that the relationship will break. Attached person, you're not thinking that the relationship will break.

Speaker 1: 23:44

So for a securely attached person who might feel conflict, who is like dealing with conflict, here's what it's actually going to look like. You're going to name the topic early. You're gonna be like I want to talk about X, you want to talk about it now or after dinner, and they're going to stay present and take a short time out with a clear time to return often, not always and then you'll just be honest. Short, honest sentences, ask for reflection and that's basically it. A person with securely attached relationships is going to just say hey, I want to talk about this, you want to talk about it now or you want to talk about it later. You want to talk about it later? Okay, cool, hey, it's later. Do you want to talk about that thing now? Hey, this is what was on my mind. It's like this was bothering me. How do you feel about that? Oh, okay, yeah, see, okay, I'm glad I brought it up. That was bothering me and I'm clearly it was. It wasn't just me.

Speaker 1: 24:45

You know, like secure attachment when it meets conflict is really a non-event. That's that's what's so annoying. Almost is like most of healing. When you come from a really traumatized background, everything in your life has been really intense and you enjoy the intensity. We enjoy the intense ups because that's how we counterbalance the intense downs and when we're looking for, like, the solve for our stuff, we don't expect it to be so damn boring, but it is. It's pretty boring. It's pretty boring to become healthy.

Speaker 1: 25:22

So this is what I really wanted to talk about is securely attached, and well, securely attached is rare, but what I actually wanted to talk about is that avoidance. It's this avoidance piece. I wanted to talk about how there is avoidant personalities and then there are like avoidant attachment types and we call those avoidant personalities sometimes, and then there are conflict avoidant people and you can be avoidant personality and conflict avoidant. That's extremely common. Michael is one of those, my Michael. He is definitely avoidant, attached and a conflict avoidant, and good thing for me. I'm not afraid of conflict and I also turned my anxious attachment into aggressive attachment and was like you're not going to get to back out of this because I pay the price. And we've found a really great way to navigate this stuff together. But I really wanted to make it very clear that by avoiding conflict you create more conflict and I wanted to give a few pieces as to exactly how that happens and I feel like I kind of laid that out.

Speaker 1: 26:33

If you avoid conflict over and, over and over and you skip 10 small talks, then you will have one big blow up and by avoiding the little things, you may let them go, but you let them go consciously, but you don't let them go fully. We don't let them go subconsciously. There's a piece of us that keeps it around, despite our best intentions, despite wanting to actually let it go, despite knowing that we ought to be able to let it go. That's just a bowl in the sink at the end of the night. We ought to be able to let it go, but something in us doesn't allow us to, no matter how silly it is and the more silly it is, the more we feel like we ought to be able to let it go and it still doesn't go away. And then that friction builds and builds and builds and builds in the background and then our partners notice, hey, something is off, something's wrong, what's going on. And they're pouring more attention onto us and more attention onto us and they're being really careful about what they bring up and they're trying to really make sure that everything is all right. And now we're creating stress in the relationship that they are having to solve, our distress that we don't even realize that we have because we thought we let it go, we thought that we were good, we thought we let go of the conflict, but it's still there.

Speaker 1: 27:56

So for the conflict-avoidant people recognize that when you let it go, no, you don't. Even when you try your best, you don't. That's just the biology. Sometimes we can, in rare circumstances, we can genuinely let it go and let it all go all at once, and you can feel when that happens, because it's so rare, and you're like, wow, I actually genuinely don't give a shit and it's so rare and you're like, wow, I actually genuinely don't give a shit and it's a surprise, at least for me. But when you think you're letting things go, you're not. When you think you're avoiding the conflict, you're avoiding the conflict now and you're kicking that can down the road and you're going to be carrying some small portion of the tension along with you and if you do that long enough, you'll wind up hurting the people that you love the most to such a degree that when you look at them and you see the pain they're in, it hurts you so deeply that you wind up having to end the relationship that means the most to you, because you can't handle how much pain you are experiencing because you are conflict avoidant and your partner is not Not conflict avoidant, not conflict avoidant at all.

Speaker 1: 29:08

Their partner was not, and I really hope this helps. I love you all and to you special love. Who is listening? I love you with all my heart and I hope this helps. You are one of the most wonderful and marvelous human beings I have ever met in my life and I cannot wait to see you again. So sleep well and remember, stay curious and stay uncomfortable. Thank you you.